The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-08-12

Children, eager to see, climbed up into the
windows and tried to view the mysterious
process, so different from the ordinary
burial
THE EXERCISES.
Upon the arrival of the funeral cortege,
at 3 o'clock, the pall-bearers quietly carried
the coffin into the cellar TO the right OF the
retort
The fires had been started at 10 o'clock
and the heat of the furnace was about
1000 Fahrenheit. Removed from the
coffin the body was placed on steel lad
der covered with a linen sheet saturated
with solution of alum water.
Rev. John A. Vos, of the German Protes-
tant church of Camp Washington, a fine
looking, portly gentleman, made a few re
marks in German, not touching upon the
subject of cremation, but saying that there
was now no occasion for sorrowing or
mourning: that the pains of the body, the
cares and troubles of life were over and
suffering past; that the spirit of the good
woman had gone to its Maker.
HOW THE CORPSE BURNED.
Then the huge iron doors of the retort
were opened and the ladder containing the
corpse slipped in. The oven looked glowing
and hot. Sparks of fire flashed ever and
anon on the surface of the ovens floor. The
door shut with bang, and the crowd filed
eager parties from the outside, until every
one had taken a look.
Flames red and blue and green now filled
the retort, and nothing else was visible. The
thin and dried flesh sized and sputtered
beneath the alum tinctured sheet. Then
the various gases of the body escaped, and
We're eagerly caught up by the intense heat
and carried into the chimney and out into
the open ether. Hotter and hotter grew the
heat. 1t was even painful to gaze in at the
| fiery, CLASSY glow.
The engineer, with red bandana hand
kerchief saturated with ice water on top of
his head, shoveled in the last of ten bushels
OF coke, and at O'Clock the relatives had
all gone and only few stragglers remained.
The t1ameS now assumed pale yellowish
hue, and were steadily carried out of the
chimney. After an hour nothing could be
seen but the form of the deceased clad in q
vapory shroud of white. Then the sheet
| seemed to pass away, and nothing was seen
but long pile of thin ashes There was
nothing to indicate that it had been a human
body, for the skull was fiat. The arms and
body were all one pile of ashes lying on the
cross-bars of the ladder and down on the
floor of the retort. No mere fuel was
added: no more was needed. The furnace
will cool, and early this morning the ashes
| gathered up and given to the relatives.
THE SENTIMENT BEAUTIFUL.
Whatever there is of sentiment surely be-
| longs to cremation. Associated with the
passing away of mortality by incineration
there is nothing of that horrible idea of the
bodybeing the prey and food of worms and
| maggots. There is no idea of imprison-
ment down in the deep, cold earth. What
more beautiful idea of her deceased husband
could the young and blooming widow en-
terrain than that there on the mantel- piece
or on the window-sill, where the warm rays
of the sun pour in, all collected in a hand
some porcelain or bronze vase, lay her
former lie and noble lordl When the
first agonO of her grief were over, after
she had many time and oft believed the
ashes with her tears, and time wore on,
she might plant flowers, beautiful
flowers, in the urn. and they would
| soon come and remind her that there still
was life an happiness, and something yet
to live for. They would be to her peenix
whose ashes an Egyptian sun warmed into
life, and as the flowers bioomed and bright
| ened the color would come back to her pale
and haggard cheeks, and another lover
would come to cheer her widowed loneli-
ness.
CARNATIONS are not as solemn, not as
heartrending as funerals. They are more
economical, and, i'll q sanitary point of
view, better for the health OF those that are
left behind.
Fully one thousand people witnessed tie
cremation yesterday, and there was among
them all not a dissenting voice, but every
one said: What peaceful, nice way of dis
posing of the dead!'